The Original Grotesque

Before the middle ages, {or “Dark Ages”} the Greeks and subsequently the Romans had a pretty thriving culture, with art and temples and carved marble and things covered in gold, {Like the Catholics! More on that later} but then Christianity went mainstream {Thanks a lot, Constantine} and all this cool old stuff was “Lost” and destroyed because it was “Pagan”.

Fast forward to the Renaissance and Europe is rediscovering all this old stuff, like “Math” and the old stories, which were a lot more popular with artists because Nymphs and Goddesses of Beauty presented a lot more opportunities to carve naked women than the Madonna ever did.

One of the things they eventually rediscovered was Nero’s tomb.

The Ponte Vecchio {and the Vasari Corridor}

This is a bridge in Italy most people know, I had always assumed it was flanked by several similar but inferior bridges and that this is how all the old bridges used to be.
Wrong!
 In fact the only reason this bridge is like this is because the family that used to run this town {The Medicis} wanted to get from their palace to the office without going down on the mucky street with the dirty common people.  So they had a famous architect build the Vasari Corridor on top of the shops that were already there.

Panorama: The Ponte Vecchio

Panorama: The Old Bridge. 

Here you can really see where they built on top of the old shops. 

Florence: Signs

You be boppin’, big daddy. 

Jazz, man, jazz.

Pisa

Pisa is a lovely little college town in Italy, with a river and a hat shop and about as many little art supply stores as you would like, none of which sold my malfunctioning mechanical pencil. 

{It’s very difficult to get a Parker Jotter mechanical pencil overseas. Everywhere had the pen version, but whatever.} Pisa is not a small town, {You couldn’t amble the perimeter in a day, for example} but it wasn’t as big as Florence. We did everything in an easy day trip, and walked across almost the full diameter of the town just to get from the train station to the tower.

There’s a lot more in town than the tower, {or Torre Pendente as the signs will tell you} there’s even a lot more RIGHT NEXT to the tower than you’re expecting, including dad’s favourite church. 

Oh, before we start a word of advice to other pin buyers such as myself in the past:  There are a lot of cool pins in Pisa, but don’t buy them from the little tourist shop next to the tower.

Buy them from the street vendor guy on the way back to the train station, they’re about $1.30 cheaper per for the exact same thing. 

Learned THAT the hard way.

I don’t know who this is, but he’s got an awesome hat and a sword, so obviously he was d*mn lucky.

BONUS: Pins

Everywhere I went I collected one of these little shields with the name of the place on it, except Fiesole and Lucca.
Because there I didn’t see any.

The Inside of the Duomo, and the Baptistery

The inside of the duomo is very nice, but it’s also very big and very dark and I left the tripod in America. {SO HEAVY}
So bear with me here.

WARNING TO RELIGIOUS/UPTIGHT PEOPLE: There are some pictures of an old painting where the devil or somebody is stuffing sinners in his mouth.
It’s bloody and kind of gross, but still, it’s religion.
Oh, there’s also an actual human skull.
I think it’s a saint, or something.

 Detail: Doors with sheep on them. 

They’re really big on sheep here.

The main interior of the duomo, walk up view.

I Am Not a Spammer.

The Grand Hotel Baglioni

This is a very cool hotel, it’s not a super cheap hotel but it’s at most ten minutes by foot from anything you might want to see in Florence. Everything cool is within about a mile, including {But not limited to} the Duomo and Michelangelo’s David.
 If you can, try and do what we did and get a multinational oil corporation to pay for it.

Scene: The Grand Hotel Baglioni

The Outside of the Duomo, and the Bell–Tower.

 In Florence Italy there is a giant cathedral {Or Duomo} called the Santa Maria Del Fiore, or Saint Mary of the Flower, the flower of course being Jesus.

It’s really, really big, and impressive, and beautiful and has kept me from being lost on several occasions because it points almost exactly west, so it’s like having a giant compass you can see from almost everywhere.

It also helps that all the streets with cool stuff radiate from it, so most times I would Goto:Duomo Turn: Left/right and amble for awhile until I got there.

In our hotel “On the Roof” {really more like a penthouse} there was a breakfast type restaurant, with a buffet and giant windows. This picture was taken from inside, there.

Lucca

   Lucca is a kind of small–seeming walled town over by pisa.
Small–seeming because there’s really two parts to it, defined by the old wall. Inside the wall it’s very old–timey and Italian, there’s lots of churches and tourist stuff. People also live there, but the wall part’s not that big, Dad and I ambled all the way around it in an afternoon.
  Outside the wall is a proper town, There was a cathedral and the train station, it looked like the sort of place there’d be a grocery store, for example. We didn’t go over there, really. Dad was hungry and I had the beginnings of a cold.

Bongo!

{Yog Yog Yog}

I overexposed this picture by like 1&1/2 stops through a green window, so this is the best recovery I could do. But it’s a building where they apparently produce answers!